


how we need another soul to cling to

by shivroys_fucktoys



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Lesbian Shiv Roy, Medium Burn, also tw hetero sex, enemies to lovers but only according to shiv, in which she becomes so horny she invents a new mental illness, shiv is deranged and we will not apologize for that because she also has a fat ass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:48:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28680615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shivroys_fucktoys/pseuds/shivroys_fucktoys
Summary: "Shiv almost shrugs. She doesn’t particularly want to marry Tom, but if her options are marrying Tom or being alone, she’ll put on a dress and walk down an aisle. She doesn’t care. Tom won’t leave her. He won’t divorce her like Rava, won’t ignore her like Grace, won’t take her money like the blonde Connor is currently paying. She can have a happy marriage and rub it in her brothers’ faces and prove to her dad she can keep a relationship together."
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Karolina Novotney (Implied), Siobhan "Shiv" Roy/Tom Wambsgans, Willa Ferreyra/Connor Roy (sorry), Willa Ferreyra/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	how we need another soul to cling to

Shiv has always been aware that Tom is a bit stupid. You can’t spend three years with someone and not know. Tom is earnest, and desperate for approval, and so boring it borders on painful, and yeah, he’s a little dumb. Not intellectually. He’s smart enough with books, got good grades, went to a good school, but staring down at him, on one knee in the hallway of a hospital holding up a hideous ring, Shiv truly realizes that the man she always assumed she’d marry one day is an absolute fucking moron. 

What does she even say? Her father is dying. Actively dying, down the goddamn hallway, he just stroked out in a helicopter after being berated by Shiv and two of her brothers, and Tom is proposing. In the hospital. In the hospital where her father is dying, and Shiv looks terrible and he didn’t even ask her about the ring, if he had asked her she would have told him that it’s awful, and Shiv cannot fucking deal with this right now. She doesn’t want to deal with this. 

“Tom, this is not the moment, what the fuck were you thinking? What is it about my dad dying in a sterile environment that screams big romantic gesture to you?” Shiv snaps, and Tom looks like she just kicked him in the chest. His entire life seems to revolve around her, and he’s so genuine and he’s so hapless and Shiv isn’t sure whether to love him or hate him for it. He’s so loyal and so dedicated, he wouldn’t even think about glancing at another woman, and he loves her, and it’s easy to let him love her. 

“Well, it’s a horrible day,” Tom says, floundering, with his Midwestern accent and his eager smile and the open, pleasant way he always looks at her, like he’s lucky to have her in his life. He is lucky. Shiv could have anyone in the entire goddamn world, anyone she wanted, and she picked him. She picked him because he was nice, and fairly useless, and he adores her, and that’s going to have to be good enough. “I thought- no you know what, you’re right, it’s- it’s fine, really, never even happened.”

Shiv looks at him. Even if they weren’t in a hospital, even if she was dressed up and pretty and he took her to a nice restaurant or a beach or a garden, she would probably tell him no. She wants to tell him no. She’d break up with him here and now if he wasn’t the only person who was totally, utterly on her side. Tom is the only one in her corner, the only person who loves her without any ulterior motive, and without him she would be alone and she can’t stand being alone. “Okay. Okay, let’s just-”

“Yeah.” Tom stands up, brushing off his pants, and Shiv watches him snap the ring box closed and try to fumble it back into his pocket. He’s good to her. Tom is good to her. He loves her deeply and he would never leave her and she knows this, she knows he wouldn’t abandon her, she knows he’s the only constant in her life, and he’d take Mondale if he left, and she can’t let him take Mondale. He’d leave her with nothing if she dumped him, and she won’t be left with nothing. 

“But if it did happen, would you-” Tom says, tripping over his words, and Shiv swallows a nasty retort. She refuses to be mean to Tom. Not directly, anyways. She can’t. She won’t. Her father, Roman, Kendall, even Connor, all told her that she was picking the easy way out with Tom, that she was choosing someone who’d never leave her, but she doesn’t think anything is wrong with that, really. Who are they to judge? Kendall’s wife is leaving him, Roman’s girlfriend barely speaks to him, Connor dates escorts almost exclusively, they have no right to judge her and who she chooses. “I mean just, whenever the moment then is, and-”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” Shiv almost shrugs. She doesn’t particularly want to marry Tom, but if her options are marrying Tom or being alone, she’ll put on a dress and walk down an aisle. She doesn’t care. Tom won’t leave her. He won’t divorce her like Rava, won’t ignore her like Grace, won’t take her money like the blonde Connor is currently paying. She can have a happy marriage and rub it in her brothers’ faces, prove to her dad she can keep a relationship together and keep her mother placated. 

“Yes? That’s a yes?” Tom’s big dumb face lights up and Shiv forces herself not to sigh. It’s not a yes, really, but if Tom sees it as a yes, then it’s a yes. Close enough to one, anyways. Shiv swallows hard, the idea of marrying Tom is so unpleasant her lunch threatens to come back up, but marrying Tom isn’t worse than being alone. Nothing is worse than being alone, and so if she has to marry Tom to get him to stay, then she will. It won’t be the worst thing. Tom makes nice coffee and walks Mondale and loves her, and she could be happy with him. Probably. 

“When it happens, yeah. Whatever.” Shiv says finally, and Tom grins his dopey grin and scoops her up. He twirls her around and kisses her and holds her to his chest and Shiv lets him, kisses him back with her lips pressed together tightly, she refuses to kiss Tom with tongue in a hospital, and he puts her down after a moment, kissing her again. Shiv obliges him another kiss and then starts back for the waiting room, letting him trail after her like the big hapless puppy he is. 

Connor is making out with Willa. In the hospital where her dad is dying, Connor is playing tonsil hockey with an escort. Well, that’s just fantastic. Shiv’s stomach lurches at the sight, though she doesn’t know why, and Roman glances up from his phone for what appears to be the first time since Shiv left and makes a dramatic gagging noise. How he didn’t hear the disgusting wet noises is beyond Shiv, but Roman is a fucking moron who doesn’t notice things unless they’re related to him in some way, so they could have been having sex in front of him and he probably wouldn’t have stopped flicking through Twitter. 

“Hey, knock it off! What the fuck?” Roman gags again, louder this time, and Connor pulls away from Willa and flashes an apologetic smile at the three of them. Willa doesn’t look particularly apologetic, she just recrosses her knees in a skirt that is absolutely not appropriate to be wearing in a hospital and tucks a bit of hair behind her ear. Willa is pretty, so wildly out of Connor’s league it’s almost laughable, tall and beautiful and blonde with gentle blue eyes and perfect white teeth, she’s almost distractingly attractive and it makes Shiv’s stomach hurt sometimes. She doesn’t think she’s jealous of Willa, really, Shiv knows that she herself is very pretty, plus she’s an escort and that’s not a profession Shiv is interested in, and so she doesn’t know why, exactly, she feels so strange when she sees Willa, but she knows that she doesn’t like it. 

Shiv sits down beside Roman, across from Willa, and tucks both legs beneath her, checking her phone as Tom takes the seat on her other side. When she looks up, Willa is looking at her. Not maliciously, Shiv doesn’t think, not with any anger, she’s just looking at Shiv with very soft eyes that Shiv can’t read. Is this a fucking power play? Is she trying to psych Shiv out, establish some kind of weird dominance? Seems like a bad time and place, but Connor isn’t exactly known for picking smart women. 

Whatever it is, Willa’s gaze is making her feel tense and anxious and strange. Shiv glances at her very briefly, she doesn’t want to make eye contact, and then she does it again. And again. Willa doesn’t stop looking at her, smoothing her skirt over her knees and holding Connor’s hand and examining Shiv. Maybe she thinks Shiv’s sweater is ugly. Shiv’s sweater is ugly, and she likes that it’s ugly, and she doesn’t care about a fucking hooker’s opinion, no matter how pretty and sweet said hooker seems. Shiv looks up at her, properly, and Willa smiles at her pleasantly. It rattles Shiv, the smile, her stomach feels unfamiliar and strange and she has to look away again so she doesn’t throw up on herself. 

“You alright, honey?” Tom puts one hand on her knee, big and covered in fine dark hair and nauseating, and Shiv forces herself to swallow her vomit. Willa looks away from her, over at Connor, and they’re holding hands and Connor leans over to whisper something in her ear that makes her giggle. Shiv is smarter than Connor, so much smarter than Connor, and she can tell that giggle is as fake as Kendall’s new nose, but she doesn’t remark on it. If Connor wants to spend the money their dad gives them on a pretty blonde who pretends to laugh at his jokes, he can. She doesn’t care. 

“What? Yeah. Yeah, no, my dad’s dying, Tom. I’m not alright, none of us are.” Shiv tries to dismiss him, but Tom is painfully earnest, and Shiv sort of wishes she changed into something that wasn’t a big softball sweater. Willa is made up perfectly, blonde hair shining under the lights and her bare legs visible between black leather boots and the hem of her skirt, she looks flawless and lovely and Shiv blinks, hard. This is a hospital. No need to change. Her dad is dying, and Willa appears ready to go out for a nice dinner. She’s wearing a thin silver necklace that Connor keeps playing with and Shiv wonders if Connor bought it for her, if Connor looped it around her throat and did up the clasp and expected some weird sex thing in return. She shouldn’t wonder, because that’s gross, but she does, and she hates herself for it.

“Right.” Tom says, squeezing her knee again, and Shiv debates shoving him off. She isn’t sure why Tom touching her in front of everyone is making her nauseated, but it is, and Willa’s gaze dips down to the hand on her knee and then back up at Shiv’s face. She keeps looking at Shiv, without any sort of shame, and it’s making Shiv’s stomach hurt. “Sorry, totally tone deaf of me to-”

“We get it. You’re sorry. Just say that and move on.” It comes out a bit sharper than Shiv intended and Roman huffs an nasty little laugh, leaning back in his chair and looking between Tom and Shiv. He hates all of Shiv’s boyfriends, though whether that’s because of a strange barely older brother complex or his weird pseudo-sexual issues with other men, Shiv has no clue. He seems to have it out for Tom in particular, Shiv’s had to stop him from calling Tom multiple homophobic slurs to his face on several occasions, and he makes a face at Shiv before turning to Tom. 

“Whew, trouble in paradise, huh? Yikes. What did you do to her in that hallway, man, grope the wrong tit?” Roman asks, and Shiv debates kicking him in the chest. She beat Roman in a fight already today, she could do it again. She could do it in front of everyone without missing a beat, though it’s fairly undignified to do this in a hospital with her dad about to die in the next room, and Willa would probably think she was childish. Shiv shouldn’t care about Willa’s opinion, she really shouldn’t care about the thoughts of an escort that’s sucking off Connor for money, but she does, and she doesn’t want to. 

“Is there a wrong one? Oh god, I never knew.” Connor asks, genuinely concerned. Willa looks like she wants to die a bit inside, her pretty eyes dimming a fraction, but as soon as Connor glances over at her, she shakes her head and pats his thigh and lets him kiss her on the cheek. Jesus, how much is he paying her to act like this? How much does it cost for a beautiful woman to pretend she likes you? If Willa charges him any less than two thousand dollars a minute, she’s giving him a discount. “I could have groped the wrong one like fifty percent of the time.” 

“Can everybody just shut up about groping? Please? Jesus.” Shiv leans back in her chair, frowning, and Tom wraps an arm around her shoulders and rubs her arm. Shiv can feel Roman’s sly little eyes on her, well aware he’s got a stupid, awful smirk plastered all over it, and she can feel Willa looking at her too, studying her with those annoying, distracting blue eyes, and she wishes everyone would stop just fucking looking at her. She hates being looked at and she hates being watched and she wishes she was fucking dead, to be perfectly honest, because it would be easier than Willa’s gaze on her. 

-

Shiv is already in bed when Tom crawls in beside her. She’s in her pyjamas, showered and clean and tired, sending a final email to Joyce before she goes to sleep, and Tom is beside her, kissing her shoulder with one of his sweaty hands on her hips and tugging her into him. Shiv rolls over, turning to look at him, and he smiles big and earnest at her, in his striped pyjama set that makes him look like a cartoon character from the 50s, buttoned all the way up to his throat, and for a moment Shiv hates him so much she can barely breathe. 

“You wanna have sex?” He asks, and Shiv nearly vomits. She and Tom have sex once a week, twice if he’s lucky, and Shiv thought that was enough for him. They’ve already had sex once this week, yesterday morning, quick in their pyjamas before Shiv had to get up and talk on the phone for an hour, and she thought that could tide him over for another week or so. Tom isn’t a particularly sexual guy, he never has been, it took them three months to have sex for the first time and Tom had cried afterwards, he likes looking at her face when he comes, she had put on lingerie to surprise him once and he had told her he preferred it when she wore comfortable clothes. It should be enough for him. 

“Uh, no, Tom not tonight. It’s been a long day and I’m fucking exhausted, to be honest.” Shiv says, and Tom nods, kissing her shoulder again. He smells like he always does, like shampoo and toothpaste, entirely bland and nonthreatening, and it makes Shiv’s stomach turn. She wonders if this is how Willa feels, disgusted every time Connor touches her, and holy shit she should not be thinking about Willa while she’s in bed with her boyfriend/fiance. Like, not even close. Willa also gets paid to have sex with Connor, and Shiv does not get paid to have sex with Tom. Tom couldn’t afford her if she did charge him. 

“Alright, that’s fine.” Tom smiles at her again, and there’s a strange look in his eyes when he does, an unpleasant look that Shiv can’t stand. He’s rubbing her arm slowly, all clammy hands and bumbling fingers, and Shiv doesn’t stop him. She could stop him, if she asked him to stop, he would, and apologize for it, and let her roll over and fall asleep and stare at her back until he fell asleep too, but Shiv doesn’t want to bother. He’d ask her about it in the morning over coffee and Shiv would have to deal with it and she is just so fucking tired of dealing with things. 

“What is it?” Shiv props herself up on one elbow and looks at him, the lines on his face and his weak eyes and the hairline that seems to be moving steadily backwards, and wonders if she’d hate looking at him less with a beard. It wouldn’t matter if she did, Tom is incapable of growing anything besides a very scraggly bit of hair on his upper lip that makes him look like he’s got pubes glued to his face, but she might suffer a bit less if half his face was covered. Maybe. 

“You seem very exhausted lately, as in pretty much all the time. I just worry, honey.” Tom reaches up and tucks a bit of hair behind her ear, touching her cheek, and Shiv forces herself not to flinch away from his touch. She hates when he calls her honey, and dear, and honey badger, and babe, it makes her stomach turn, but she also hates when he calls her Shiv, so it’s a bit of a lose-lose. 

“I’m fine. I have a lot going on. Lots on my plate, very little appetite, that kinda thing.” 

“Right, right. No, I get it, I do. But if there’s anything I can do to-”

“Actually, let’s have sex.” Shiv says, sitting up in bed. She doesn’t particularly want to have sex with him, not really, but she doesn’t want to keep talking to him, and if sex will make him stop looking at her with sad eyes, she’ll ride him into the fucking sunset. She straddles Tom’s hips and and pats his cheek, putting on her very best fake smile, and Tom rests his hands lightly on her waist and grins up at her like a dumb puppy. 

“Really?” Tom asks, and Shiv nods, running one hand over his thinning hair. Just saying the word sex has Tom half-hard in his pyjama pants, pressing uncomfortably up into her, and she gives him half a grin. She doesn’t like having sex with Tom, but she likes knowing she can incite this reaction from him, from anyone, and she reaches down to palm him through his pants and lifts her eyebrows. 

“Yeah, c’mon.” Shiv gives him a light squeeze and Tom looks so ridiculously giddy that Shiv nearly crawls off and goes to sleep. Her stomach hurts just thinking about fucking him, but it’s a little late to back out now, so she reaches down and frees Tom from his pants. She wouldn’t mind just jerking him off and being done with it, honestly, but then he’ll try and get her off too, with his dumb mouth or his clumsy fingers, and Shiv has neither time nor patience to deal with that right now. 

Shiv is on birth control, she’s been on birth control since she was sixteen years old, and so she guides Tom inside her without bothering to retrieve a condom from the nightstand, begging her body to give her a tiny little bit of lubrication. Usually she drizzles lube onto Tom’s cock, slicks him up just enough to ease the burning, but it would be more effort than she’s willing to give at the moment, so she just rocks back and forth in a desperate attempt to get herself wet. Tom groans, a sound so awful she wants to put her hands over her ears, and Shiv clenches around him, wondering how quickly she can get this over with. 

How the fuck does Willa do this? Either she has a very active imagination or her lube expenses are more than Waystar pulls in a year, or she actually likes having sex with men, which is ridiculous. Women don’t like having sex with men, they just do it, because they have to and they’re supposed to, and Shiv rolls her hips again, trying to rub her clit against Tom’s stomach for even a little friction. Tom makes another hideous noise, staring up at her with his love-struck eyes, and Shiv shuts her own. 

Willa must put on a fucking show for her clients. If Shiv was paying a woman for sex, she’d expect a performance better than a porn star, she’d want Willa’s head tipped back and her mouth open and her eyes fluttering shut, she’d want soft pretty sighs and a pink flush and some gasping about size or length or something, tits bouncing and hair flowing and the best head of her entire goddamn life. She wonders if Willa practices at home, sitting in front of a mirror, pretending to have sex and examining her body in the mirror to see if she looks good, if she records her own moans, if she tapes herself mimicking orgasm to see if it appears natural. Shiv would, if she was a hooker, but Shiv has always been so ridiculously type-A that it might be an abnormal thought. 

Shiv is wet. Not overly, not enough that she might actually get some pleasure out of this, but enough that she isn’t in pain, and she doesn’t know where it comes from, but she isn’t going to question it. She braces her palms on the headboard and picks up speed as best she can, desperate to finish this up, and Willa can’t do that. Willa can’t get it over with, she needs to roll her hips and arch her back and moan, needs to make her clients feel like she wants it, and that can’t be easy. Shiv can almost picture her face, lips parted wide, eyes shut just so, the kind of face that makes men feel like they’re sex gods, and Tom groans again, louder this time, holding her waist, and Shiv wants to smack his hands away so they don’t stain her skin. 

How many men have stained Willa’s skin? A hundred. A thousand. Maybe more. Maybe they aren’t all men. Maybe Willa sees women, too, but the idea of a woman paying another woman for sex is strange. She might, though. Willa doesn’t seem the type to pick a side. Shiv thinks of Willa, spread out on a bed beneath another long-limbed figure, cunts rubbing together, tits pressed against each other, all soft skin and soft hair and soft touches, and rocks against Tom harder, faster, clenching around him so he can finish and she can be done. 

If she paid enough, she could probably get Willa to have a threesome with her and Tom. She isn’t sure Tom would be particularly into it, he barely knows what to do with one woman, but this is Willa’s job. She could figure out how to get Tom involved. Isn’t that every man’s fantasy? Two women, kissing and touching and fucking, writhing together, kissing wet and sloppy and then taking turns blowing him? Tom isn’t every man, though. He’d probably talk the entire time, even if Willa was on top of him and Shiv was kissing Willa, probably ramble on as Willa rode him and Shiv felt her up, and he’d embarrass her in front of Willa, and Shiv refuses to let Tom embarrass her in front of Willa. 

Tom makes the same face every time he comes, his mouth twists and his eyes screw shut and he makes a choked, gasping noise, so as soon as Shiv sees his eyes close tight, she leans back and moans and lets him think she’s getting off too. Shiv has never once come close to an orgasm with Tom, but she’s never managed to finish with anything besides her own hand, so she doesn’t hold it against him. (She does, but she likes to pretend she doesn’t.) She lets him think he makes her come, though, she makes the appropriate noises when she fucks him and pretends to enjoy it when he goes down on her, tells him it was good when she felt nothing at all, and she makes sure he gets off regularly. She doesn’t know why she does, but she likes when it’s her that makes him feel good, likes knowing she’s capable of making him feel good, and he’s normally a bit quieter when she blows him, so she manages. 

“I love you.” Tom chokes out, and pulls her into a kiss as he comes. Shiv kisses him back, mostly so she doesn’t have to tell him she loves him, and fakes her own orgasm with the same ease she fakes most things. She slows her hips, uncomfortably aware of Tom’s come inside her, and Tom kisses her again as she lifts herself off his cock and pulls her pyjama pants back up. Occasionally Shiv gets Tom a facecloth or something to get clean after sex, but she thinks she might vomit if she has to look at him for another second, so she just hands him a tissue from the nightstand and kisses his cheek. 

“Back in a minute.” Shiv says, and she knows when she comes back from the bathroom Tom will be snoring. He’s always tired after sex, as if four minutes is enough to exhaust him, and Shiv shuts and locks the door behind her and bites down on her hand so she doesn’t burst into miserable tears. She wants to shower, wants to tear her pyjamas off and scrub herself raw, wants to peel her skin off and leave nothing behind but weeping, open flesh. She wants to dunk herself in acid and come out bones, bleach herself clean so the stink of Tom is washed straight off, but she doesn’t. She sits on the toilet and puts her face in her hands instead, rests her elbows on her knees and presses the heels of her palms into her eyes so she doesn’t start sobbing. 

She can’t cry. She’s a grown woman, and adults don’t cry. Her father had told her that when she was fifteen and Shiv hasn’t cried since, not when her dog died, not when both her parents skipped her university graduation, not when her grandparents died and not when her first boyfriend cheated on her. Adults don’t fucking cry and Shiv is an adult and she is not going to cry. She isn’t. She grinds her palms into her eyes, forcing back the tears prickling behind them, and takes a sharp breath in. Adults don’t cry, Siobhan, unless you aren’t an adult. Are you a child, Pinkie? Is that it? 

Shiv doesn’t cry. She tugs her pyjama pants up and stands in front of the mirror, eyes dry, cheeks tinged very slightly pink. Willa probably doesn’t cry after she sees one of her clients, even though Shiv genuinely couldn’t blame her if she did. Willa probably moves on with her life after having sex with men, probably just has a shower and goes to bed, and if someone like Willa doesn’t cry, Shiv absolutely cannot cry. That would be absolutely fucking pathetic, because she’s so above Willa it’s not even funny, and she’s better than Willa. She’s better than everyone, and she won’t fucking cry. 

Shiv cries. Once she’s back in bed with a sleeping Tom, curled beneath the covers as far away from his body as she can manage, miserable tears trickle down her face like blood. She hates herself for crying and she hates herself for being with Tom and she hates everything and she wants to claw her face off, wants to seal her tear ducts shut so she never sheds another tear, wonders if she could get that surgically done, her chest hurts and her stomach hurts and she takes a shuddering breath, forcing herself to stay calm enough that Tom won’t wake up. If Tom wakes up, she’ll have to explain her tears, and she can’t do that. What is she supposed to say, that touching him makes her want to strip the flesh from her bones? That having sex with him is like torture? She can’t say that. She’ll break his heart, and then he’ll leave her, and Siobhan Roy does not get left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> siobhan roy voice ladies is it gay to think about another woman's tits while you have miserable sex with your soon to be husband


End file.
